Photos: Shrink virtual disks with VM Optimizer Corporate Edition

By carareynolds September 21, 2006, 3:37 AM PDT

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VM Optimizer Corporate Edition

If you work with virtual machines on a daily basis, you are quite familiar with the amount of space virtual disks consume. There is a product available today that shrinks virtual disks to more manageable levels; it is a great piece of software called VM Optimizer.

In this screenshot gallery, Stephen Warren shows you how this software works in action.

Creating a virtual machine (VM)

For the purposes of this photo gallery, I created a virtual machine (VM) in VMware Workstation. I loaded it with Windows 2003 R2. Once the installation was complete, I had a virtual disk with a size of 1.77 GB.

Pointing to the VM Optimizer SO image

After installing VM Optimizer, I pointed my VM to the VM Optimizer ISO image.

Automatically optimizing

After booting the VM, the VM Optimizer Corporate Edition automatically optimizes the VM.

Optimization complete

After the optimization is complete, you must shrink the virtual machine.

Options for shrinking

VMware Workstation 5 has two options available: command line or inside VMware utility.

Reduced virtual disk

Once the process is complete, you are left with a new virtual disk that has been reduced drastically to 883 MB.

You can also take it one step further by archiving the VM in WinZip or Winrar. It will reduce the 883 MB to roughly 290 MB.

By carareynolds

Cara Reynolds an editor on TechRepublic's content team. She has been working in educational, licensed, and Web publishing for more years than she cares to admit and hosts the Right Tool for the Job blog on TechRepublic.

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